more on the dreaded return…

Just as a follow-up to this post, I would direct you to this on Jezebel, which is pretty well reasoned…and if you watch the video clip in the piece from The View of all places, I find myself  pretty impressed with Whoopi Goldberg’s thoughts on the subject.

Though the Jezebel piece also directs folks to a fairly horrid post by some douchebag named Foster Kamen writing at BlackBook (which I guess indicates that somebody reads BlackBook, which is a surprise unto itself — and which I’m not linking to here ’cause why fan that flame?), which a website run by a group of DS parents brought to my attention a few days ago. The OZ Squad is a cool movement online, and has brought a lot of parents together,but this particular “mission” is one that I just can’t bring myself to take part in — it’s part of that whole “not worth losing my serenity over” things that I’m trying really hard to stick to. Why even attempt to engage with someone who is so obviously starving for attention in a forum that’s so, well, kind of useless? (Again, do people actually read BlackBook? Look at the pretty pictures, maybe… And if they do, is it taken at all seriously? I mean, it’s a glorified fashion magazine, right?)

In my opinion, the best way to snuff out a flame like that one is just to simply ignore it — well, not ignore it necessarily, but I definitely don’t want to give it any more air. It’d be kind of like trying to convince Rush Limbaugh that Obama’s actually doing a decent job. You could spend vast amounts of energy getting all worked up about that, but then again, you could go ahead and punch a brick wall for an hour, too, and I wouldn’t advise that either.

(Update: speaking of Rush and douchebags, stay classy, dude. Just about exactly what you’d expect from the giant gasbag. Wonder if Sarah Palin will ask that he be fired… hmmm, I probably won’t hold my breath on that one.)

Though there definitely is an argument to be made for shining a spotlight on crap like that, if only so that more people get a better idea of what parents and families and friends and people with disabilities themselves are talking about when they say that using the word “retarded” is not okay.

(In fact, I was about to reverse myself and link to the piece after all, but then I re-read his “definitions” of example euphemisms for “retarded” and thought better of it — Jezebel doesn’t happen to mention that part of his piece when they excerpt how he’s “defending” the use of the word, probably because, again, it just demonstrates his huge douchiness.)

Anyway, speaking of spotlights, at least the Rahm debacle is creating more of a discussion about this. Maybe The View ladies or even Oprah can get Jamie Foxx on with his sister (found via OMMTO) and maybe John C. McGinley with his son to discuss the issue further– now, that would be kick-ass.